Israelitish literature, being one of the sages £or whom Edom was celebrated (1 Kings iv. 30), a man whose sayings were deemed of sufficient value and inspiration to insert in the sacred canon, though he, like Job, ;was not one of the chosen people. The more probable rendering of the second hemistich of ver. 1 of this chapter, which is given in the margin of the Revised V ereion, is noted in the Exposition. ►t Aa Agnr ie considered a symbolical name of Solomon, so is Lemuel in the next chapter, which opens thus: "The words of King Lemuel, the burden which his mother taught him." Lemuel (or Lemoel, as ver. 4) means ·" U rito God," equivalent to "Dedicated to God; " and it is supposed to be applied to Solomon, who from infancy was dedicated to God, and called by him Jedidiah, "Beloved of the Lord" (2 Sam. xii. 25). But there is no good reason for supposing' Solomon to be designated Lemuel. If Agnr meant Solomon, why is the name now suddenly changed ? And how can we suppose the following address to have been spoken by Bathsheba, the adulteress and virtual murderess? This is a difficulty not resolved by 1·egarding "the mother" as a. personification of the Hebrew Church, which is an arbitrary assumption invented to meet an objection, rather than necessitated by an observation of evidence. Those who saw in Massa the ·country of Agur's residence, would here likewise translate, "the words of Lemuel, King of Massa,'' and weave a pleasing fiction whereby Agnr and Lemuel become the sons of a Queen of Massa, who is supposed to have been, like the Queen of Sheba, a diligent seeker of wisdom. This may be true, but it is a mere conjecture, which •cannot be verified. If it is accepted, Lemuel would be an Ishmaelite, whose home was in North Arabia, and who belonged to the_ company of the wise men for whom Arabia was proverbial. At the same time, it is unlikely that the production of an alien, particularly 0£ a jealously regarded Isbmaelite, should be admitted to the sacred canon. Of course, there is the difficulty concerning the origin of the Book of Job, but as that controversy is not settled, we cannot regard this as an objection. Laying aside the theory of Lemuel being a non-Israelite, we must regard the word as the appellation of an ideal king, whether the poet looked back to Solomon or Hezekiah, whom he represents as taught by a careful mother in the way of piety and justice. Concerning the date of these appendices there is little to guide us in our determination, except that the language points to composition at a later period than the former portions of the book. We have many dialectical variations, Aramaic and Arabic expres. eions, which do not occur·in the earlier sections, and which were not, as far as we know, current in Southern Israel before Hezekiah's reign, nor probably for some long time after. The free, terse proverb is now wholly wanting, e. strained, mechanical composition taking _its place ; we have enigmas instead of maxims, laboured odelets instead of neat distichs-productions in quite different style from those hitherto handled, and showing a. decline of creative power and a tendency to make artificiality and mechanical skill take the place of thought and novelty. The passages which are similar to, i:xiv INTRODUCTION TO
and may have been derived from, Job cannot be used in proof of the late date of these sections, as the era. of the.t work ,is undetermined ; •but the painful consciousness of man's ignorance in the presence of the great Creator, which meets us, as in Job, so in this appendix (eh. xxx. 2, etc.), implies & speculative activity very foreign to the earlier Hebrew mind, and indicative of contact with other elements, a.nd acquaintance with philosophical ques- tions far removed from the times of the primordia.l monarchy. Some, accordingly, have attributed the pieces to post-exilian days; but there is not a shadow of proof for this, not an expression or an allnsion which confirms such a notion; and Delitzsch is probably correct when he dates their pro- duction at the end of the seventh or the beginning of the sixth century B.c. The closing poem, the praise of the virtnous woman, is probably still later, and certainly by a different hand. The alphabetical ode is not found till the very latest period of Hebrew poetry, though it is impossible to affix any definite date for its prodnction. "
§ 4. GENERAL CHARACTER. The whole Book of the Proverbs is rhythmica.l in construction, and it is rightly so printed in the Revised Version as to exhibit this characteristic. The great feature of Hebrew poetry, as every one knows, is parallelism, the bala.ncing of thought aga.inst thought, corresponding in form a.nd often in sound, so that one line is an echo of the other. The second member is either equiva.lent to the first, or contrasted with it or similar to it in con- strnction; the whole may consist of only two lines forming a. distich, which is the normal type of proverb, or of three or four or more; but a.11 con- tain one thought expanded on parallel lines. The various shapes which are thus assumed by the sentences in our book a.re thus noted. The simplest and ea.rliest form is the distich, 11, sentence consisting of two lines balanced one with the other, like- " A wise son maketh a glad father: But a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother " (eh. x. 1). The second part of onr book ( eh. x. 1-xxii. 16) consists mainly of such sentences. Sometimes the sense extends over three lines, forming a. tristich, when the thought in the first line is repeated in the second before the conclusion is reached. Thus- " Though thou shouldest bra.y a. fool in a mortar With a pestle among bruised corn, Yet will not his foolishness depart from him" (eh, xxvii. 22). Or the idea in the second line is developed by a contrast in the third- " Whoso causeth the upright to go astray in an evil way, He shall fall himself into his own pit: But the per_fect shall inherit good" (oh. :uviii, 10), THE PROVERBS. XXV